Press freedom, due process, and the right to counsel are part of the plumbing of price discovery, and market leaders should defend them together
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 30, 2026: Last week I asked the leaders of our industry to speak up for CNN, MS NOW and Politico after President Trump banned them from the White House. My argument was simple. Markets run on information, and when the government decides which reporters get into the building based on whether it likes their stories, it shrinks the information that feeds price discovery. I hold freedom of the press and price discovery as sacred. Bans on freedom of the press give us fewer sources of important market information, which gives us a narrower answer.
There is some good news: on September 24, Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the administration to temporarily restore the outlets’ access. He found that their badges were pulled without “constitutionally adequate due process.” He also noted that nothing in the record from before the lawsuit suggested national security was the motive, a common canard of this White House, and that the president’s own announcement focused on the “negativity” of their reporting. The president had promised that “other Fake News Media Outlets” would follow.
As expected, hoped for, and prayed for, the courts did their job, but courts should not be the only institutions standing up for the Constitution. That job also belongs to the leaders who run American markets, banks, clearinghouses, brokerage firms, and trading houses. I believe they should stick their necks out for a good reason. Their businesses depend more than most on quality and trusted price discovery.
The White House ban is not a one-off attack on the press by this president or his administration. In March, a federal judge blocked Pentagon rules that let officials revoke reporters’ credentials for asking for information the department had not released. What country is this? In April, the same court said the Pentagon had violated its order to restore that access.
The government is also still trying to revive executive orders aimed at the law firms Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey. Four federal judges struck those orders down, and in May an appeals court seemed skeptical of the government’s arguments. The giveaway was when the government attorneys showed up in a clown car.
Our industry should read that sentence twice (not the one about the clown car). Every bank, futures commission merchant, and prop shop in America depends on being able to hire the lawyer it wants when a regulator comes calling. If a firm can be punished for who its clients are, then the right to counsel becomes a privilege that exists only for those in favor. Free speech, due process and the right to counsel are not civics class abstractions. They are the plumbing of our country.
Speaking of plumbers, a clearinghouse sells a promise: it steps between buyer and seller and guarantees that the trade will be honored. That promise holds only if the legal system behind it enforces contracts, respects property, and treats everyone the same, no matter whom the White House is mad at and HARPing on this week. Netting, collateral, settlement finality, and default management all sit on top of legal opinions that assume the rules will still be the rules tomorrow.
No one would list a contract on an exchange whose rulebook could be rewritten by whoever woke up annoyed, or stayed up and posted on social media at 3 a.m. in ALL CAPS. No one wants a force majeure clause set off by a late-night or early-morning social media post. Yet that is the kind of risk investors start to price into the market when a government treats constitutional rights as favors to hand out and take back, or auction off.
The Leadership Now Project, a group of business leaders committed to defending democracy, puts it plainly: respect for the rule of law and reliable government processes are “among America’s greatest competitive advantages.” People from around the world have come to invest in the U.S. because they trust the U.S. legal system. That advantage took more than two centuries to build. It can erode much faster.
Read this lede from a September 16 story in The New York Times by Alan Rappeport:
“Global investors are balking at U.S. bonds. Talk of the dollar’s dwindling power is getting louder. Foreign governments are hauling their gold out of American vaults. Almost two years into President Trump’s second term, the world economy is increasingly looking for ways to distance itself from America. Concerns about a $40 trillion debt burden, the excessive use of sanctions to solve foreign policy problems and Mr. Trump’s penchant for pushing the limits of the rule of law are raising questions about the appeal of the United States as a haven for global investment.”
According to a blog post by the New York Federal Reserve’s Linda S. Goldberg, Oliver Hannaoui, and Sneha Parthasarathy, “The dollar’s share of global official foreign exchange reserves fell from 64 percent in 2015 to 56 percent in 2025.”
The New York Times article said the Netherlands has moved 95 tons of gold out of the United States, and the Bank of France pulled 129 tons from the New York Fed. It also reported that the 10-year Treasury yield has climbed above 5%, its highest level since 2007.
One former Treasury sanctions official, Daniel Tannebaum, who served at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and as the OFAC compliance coordinator at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, summed up the mood: “It’s like the countries don’t trust the U.S.”
The United States is not an investment pariah. The Financial Times reported on September 26 that “Foreign investors made a record $942bn in net purchases of US equities and investment fund shares in the 12 months to July.” But capital does not need a crisis to move; it only needs a reason to wonder.
The same goes for entrepreneurs. A founder deciding where to incorporate, list, or build a trading firm is betting on how predictable the rules will be. When the legal system starts to look like it depends on one person’s mood, some founders will quietly pick London, Singapore, Dubai, or Zurich. I think we heard this chorus from the crypto crowd when they were feeling the lash of the SEC’s whip. They don’t send a press release. They just don’t come back. Unless, of course, they are among the favored, bearing gifts or campaign contributions.
I understand why industry leaders have held back. Corporate governance experts told Reuters that business leaders broadly fear the administration will punish dissent. Too many examples of this behavior, especially against other politicians, make it hard to discount that fear. Hello, Liz Cheney! That fear is exactly why speaking together matters. One CEO is a target. Fifty CEOs and industry leaders are a market signal.
This should not be partisan. Let me say that again, lest I be accused of being a party functionary: This should not be partisan. The exchanges, clearinghouses, banks, trade associations and trading firms that make up this industry could sign a short joint statement of principles. It would say that news organizations should get access regardless of their viewpoint, that no one should lose a government privilege without due process, that every person and business has the right to choose its lawyer without being punished for it, and that the courts must be respected. That is not politics. Those are the product specifications for the world’s most valuable markets.
Our industry has long argued, correctly, that deep and liquid American markets are a national asset. The Constitution is what makes them so. Defend it out loud, together, and you protect your markets, your customers, and the price signal that capitalism depends on. You are the market’s guardians. Stay quiet, and the market will eventually give its own verdict. Markets usually do.
